Monica Yant Kinney: An artist is born after car crash

By Monica Yant Kinney, Inquirer Columnist

Posted: August 20, 2012

To explore the spare bedrooms that have become Ric Owens' unlikely studio and gallery is both exhausting and invigorating.

Rare is the confined space that documents a man's evolution in real time. Every turn reveals how art is speaking to - shouting at, really - someone who never even doodled before being hit by an 18-wheeler and suffering a concussion that rewired his brain.

On the bench of a repurposed Bowflex machine sit stacks of geometric ink drawings. These inaugural sketches led to subtle watercolors that, in turn, inspired an acrylic, three-dimensional explosion.

The former food-service manager shows me a cafeteria heat lamp he now uses to "cure" paint into leathery "skins" he then affixes to glass or molds into roses.

The self-described Accidental Artist now finds potential canvases in the trash - ceiling tiles, pallets, packing materials. Above a sculpture he calls a "modern Pet Rock" hangs a painting dusted in cyan and magenta, the telltale shades of printer cartridges.

"I never know what's going to come out," Owens answers when I ask if he had a distinct vision for each of the 100-plus pieces in this confounding collection. "I just let it happen."

Ric Owens before Feb. 9, 2011: an executive chef working as residential director of food service at Widener University. "I've been cooking since I was old enough to burn my fingers on the stove."

Ric Owens on Feb. 9, 2011: grateful owner of a Nissan Pathfinder who drove away unscathed - he thought - after being hit by a big rig on the Blue Route.

Owens a week later: dizzy, slurring his speech, with migraines and a strange metallic taste in his mouth. Unable to work, he holed up in the Cape Cod in Andorra he shares with his partner, Harry Richards, and four dogs and a cat.

Doctors diagnosed postconcussive syndrome. They say Owens suffered a brain injury in the crash even though he felt fine at the time. "One of the misconceptions about head trauma," he learned, "is that you need to black out."

Richards, a mental-health social worker, fretted as the love of his life dropped 60 pounds and struggled with short-term memory loss. Then, one morning, Owens woke up, blinked, and uttered a declaration of sorts.

"The world," he said, "looks different."

The junk-food lover suddenly craved mangoes. Easy analytical tasks seemed impossible. To Owens' professional horror, he had no interest in cooking but felt profoundly driven, a first in his 55 years, to make art.

"I see geometry now, I see the planes, the angles," he explains. "I never understood architecture before. Now, I stop and draw it."

Richards stands in awe of the transformation: "Something happened to his brain that changed him forever."

Brave new world

Frightened and curious, Owens found Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin psychiatrist who studies acquired savant syndrome, in which people experience obsession and dexterity at an activity - math, art, music - they'd never attempted prior to illness or injury.

One of these "accidental geniuses" appeared on the Today show this summer playing piano like a virtuoso. Another was featured on NPR. Treffert tells me he's counted as many as 50 people with "this mind-boggling condition," including Owens, who was encouraged to accept and pursue the gift.

To swap stories with others with altered lives, Owens started a Savant Syndrome Support Group on Facebook. To direct his passion and develop technique, he took a course, Painting Intuitively, at Fleischer Art Memorial, where instructor Karen Baumeister was "floored" by the novice's proclivity and productivity.